Author: Darren Goff

Stage 2 – Setup the vCenter Server Appliance with Embedded PSC

After completing stage 1, you will be taken to stage 2 and the introduction page.

Click Next

Either select Synhronize time with NTP servers or Synchronize time with ESXi host (depending on your preference). Enter NTP servers (if required) and select Enabled from the SSH access dropdown.

Click Next

As this is the first VCSA with Embedded PSC, select the Create a new SSO domain radio button

Enter the name for the Single Sing-On domain name: vsphere.local
The Single Sign-On user name is administrator and cannot be changed
Enter the Single Sign-On password and confirm the password
Enter the Single Sign-On Site name: default-site

Click Next

Select the checkbox if you would like to join the VMware Customer Experience Improvement Program

Click Next

Review the summary on the Ready to complete Install – Stage 2 page, verify the settings and then click Finish

After completing stage 1, you will be taken to stage 2 and the introduction page.

Click Next

Either select Synhronize time with NTP servers or Synchronize time with ESXi host (depending on your preference). Enter NTP servers (if required) and select Enabled from the SSH access dropdown.

Click Next

Select the Join an existing SSO domain radio button to join the existing SSO domain of the first deployed Embedded PSC VCSA appliance

Enter the FQDN of the first VCSA with Embedded PSC: vmatestlab01.testlab.com
Enter the HTTPS port: 443
Enter the Single Sign-On name: vsphere.local
The Single Sign-On user name is administrator and cannot be changed
Enter the Single Sign-On password

You will notice there is no longer an option to enter the SSO site name. For greenfield deployments, SSO sites are no longer available for new deployments.

Select the checkbox if you would like to join the VMware Customer Experience Improvement Program

Click Next

Review the summary on the Ready to complete Install – Stage 2 page, verify the settings and then click Finish

vSphere 6.7 was released in April 2018 which included many new features and enhancements. Following on from this release, vSphere 6.5 Update 2 was released in May 2018, which included some features from vSphere 6.7. As vSphere 6.7 was released prior to vSphere 6.5 U2, there is not a supported upgrade path from vSphere 6.5 U2 to vSphere 6.7. This should be carefully considered in any implementation or future upgrade plans. I expect there will be a supported upgrade path from vSphere 6.5 U2 to a future minor version release of vSphere 6.7.

vCenter Server 6.5 Update 2 now supports Enhanced Linked Mode (ELM) when the vCenter appliance is deployed with an embedded Platform Services Controller (PSC). Previous versions required external PSCs to enable ELM. The VMware KB Supported and deprecated topologies for VMware vSphere 6.5 (2147672) still needs further updates as there is only the following note at the bottom of the article:

Note: With vCenter Server 6.5 Update 2, you can deploy by using the GUI or CLI installer up to 15 vCenter Server Appliance instances in Embedded Linked Mode, and manage these instances with the vSphere Web Client or vSphere Client from any of the instances.

The recommendation from vSphere 6.5 U2 and vSphere 6.7 onwards, is to use Embedded PSCs. The caveat is that this is only for greenfield deployments, there is not a currently supported method to upgrade or migrate from external PSC deployment to an embedded PSC deployment.

Due to an issue with expiring PSC Machine SSL certificates in my homelab and challenges replacing these, I decided to deploy vCenter 6.5 U2 using embedded PSCs. I will be deploying a single SSO domain in a single SSO site. As you will notice during this deployment guide, there is not an option to create another SSO site when joining an existing SSO domain, this is due to SSO sites no longer being required for new deployments.

The vCenter 6.5 U2 appliance installation is broken into two stages, the first stage is to deploy a new appliance and the second stage is to complete the new 6.5 U2 appliance setup and configure vCenter Single Sign-On, then start the services of the newly deploy vCenter 6.5 U2 appliance.

I’ll assume you know how to download the required ISOs from the VMware website. I will be deploying the PSC/VCSA topology shown in the image below:

Stage 1 – Deploy the new vCenter Server Appliance

In stage 1, I will deploy the OVA file of the vCenter 6.5 U2 appliance. Mount the ISO and navigate to the \vcsa-ui-installer\ directory and then to the required subdirectory for your OS:

For Windows OS, go to the win32 subdirectory, and run the installer.exe

For Linux OS, go to the lin64 subdirectory, and run the installer

For Mac OS, go to the mac subdirectory, and run the Installer.app

I’m running my deployment from a Windows machine so I will run \vcsa-ui-installer\ win32\installer.exe

Select Install from the vCenter Server Appliance 6.5 U2 Installer

The introduction provides an overview of the stages required to complete the installation.

Click Next

Select the I accept the terms of the license agreement checkbox

Click Next

Select the vCenter Server with an Embedded Platform Services Controller radio button

Click Next

Enter the ESXi host FQDN where you would like the new vCSA 6.5 U2 appliance deployed.

Click Next

Click Yes on the Certificate Warning to continue.

Enter the name for the VCSA appliance VM and set a root password.

Click Next

Select the deployment size you would like for your environment. For my home lab, I selected Tiny

Click Next

Select a datastore for the VCSA and if you would like to enable Thin Disk Mode.

Click Next

Now select a network with ephemeral port binding, this is temporary and the new VCSA appliance can be moved to another network after the installation has completed.

Enter the required network configuration.

Click Next

Review the summary on the Ready to complete stage 1 page, verify the settings and then click Finish

Once the deployment has completed, click Continue to progress to Stage 2. If you close, you can continue with Stage 2 by navigating to the VAMI of the newly deployed vCenter Server appliance, https://vmatestlab01.testlab.com:5480

I will continue with the VCSA appliance configuration and SSO setup in Deploy Embedded PSC with Enhanced Linked Mode – Part 2.

VMware has recently announced the following VMware Certified Advanced Professional exams are due to expire at the end of September 2018. If you are currently studying for one of these exams, you may want to accelerate your study and schedule the exam soon before availability reduces.

In part 1 of this blog post, I demonstrated the impact of configuring vRA Directories Management using IWA in a disjointed namespace. In this blog post, I will now cover the procedure to remediate and recover vRA to an operational state.

The high level steps required to remediate vRA are listed in order below:

Verify you are now able to login to the vRA portal with an Active Directory account.

This concludes the blog post and whilst I appreciate this may be a corner case, hopefully, you have found this information useful. I’m expecting the public VMware documentation to updated for this use case, although, there are not any guarantees.

During a recent vRA 7.3 enterprise deployment at a customer site, I was required to configure vRA Directories Management to support AD user authentication. The customer had the following constraints, which impacted the expected outcome of this configuration.

Non-Windows machines were not allowed to register their DNS A or PTR records in the Active Directory integrated DNS domain.

Active Directory integration must be configured using Integrated Windows Authentication if the product supports IWA and LDAP is not permitted

Computer objects will be pre-staged in the Active Directory domain

vRA appliances and vRA IaaS nodes DNS records were located in different namespaces

This meant we needed to configure an Active Directory IWA to support user authentication using the Directory Management feature however, the AD domain name and DNS zone was a different namespace to the FQDN of the vRA appliances.

In this blog post, I will recreate this use case using the domains below to demonstrate the impact of configuring vRA Directories Management using IWA in a disjointed namespace. I will cover the procedure to remediate the configuration in a part 2.

For further information on disjointed namespaces, please refer to the Microsoft article: Disjoint Namespace

vRealize Automation appliances and vRA IaaS nodes are using an AD domain named testlab.com. All these host are configured as <hostname>.testlab.com and name resolution is provided by AD integrated DNS. The vRA IaaS Windows servers are members of the testlab.com domain.

vRA is required to support user authentication from an Active Directory domain named offprem.cloudtest.com, as such, considering the constraints, vRA Directories Management will be required to use offprem.cloudtest.com as an identity source for synchronisation

Select the primary vRA appliance as the Sync Connector from the dropdown list

Do you want this Connector to also perform authentication? Select the Yes radio button

Select sAMAccountName as the Directory Search Attribute

Enter the name of the AD domain to join and the domain admin credentials.

Enter the Bind User Details in UPN format

Click Save & Next

On the Select the Domains page, select the domains which should be associated with this AD connection.

Click Next

The Directories Management attributes are mapped to the Active Directory attributes. Review and update as required.

Click Next

Select the groups you would like to synchronise from Active Directory

Click Next

Select the users you would like to synchronise from Active Directory

Click Next

Review the page to see how many users and groups will be syncing to the directory.

Click Sync Directory

Symptoms of Configuring Active Directory IWA with a Disjointed Namespace

Configure Directories Management for High Availability

When configuring Directories Management for High Availability, you add the secondary connector to the identity provider, save the settings successfully but the configuration does not remain persistent.

Select Administration > Directories Management > Identity Providers

Click the Add a Connector drop-down list, and select the connector that corresponds to your secondary vRealize Automation appliance.

Enter the appropriate password in the Bind DN and Domain Admin Password fields.

Click Save.

The connector configuration is not saved. This could but just be a UI issue but is an observed symptom I have only witnessed in this use case.

vRA Appliance Hostname

The vRA Appliance hostname in the VAMI network tab has been updated to use the short name.

The hostname of the appliance in the OS has been updated with the FQDN of the IWA AD domain, which in my use case is not resolvable.

vRealize Automation VAMI Cluster

When viewing the vRA Cluster information in the VAMI, the node list is empty.

vRA IaaS Management Agents

The vRealize Automation Management agents config file is updated to the changed FQDN for the vRealize Automation appliance on every vRA IaaS node in the deployment.

The file is located at: <install_path>\VMware\vCAC\Management Agent\VMware.IaaS.Management.Agent.exe.Config

In part 2 of this blog, I will demonstrate how to remediate this use case, and complete the configuration of vRA Directories Management using Active Directory with Integrated Windows Authentication in a disjointed namespace.

Following on from the vRA 7 Enterprise Deployment Part 4, this blog continues the series with the installation of the vRealize Automation Deployment Wizard to complete the Enterprise Deployment vRealize Automation. Since vRA 7.0 release, the vRA deployment wizard was introduced to complete the pre-requisite configuration and automated deployment of the vRA IaaS components. It is initiated by default after the deployment of a vRealize Automation appliance and can be accessed from primary vRA virtual appliance Virtual Appliance Management Interface (VAMI) on port 5480. You will need to logon as the root account and then you are presented with the vRA Deployment Wizard.

Installation Steps using the Installation Wizard

Log in to the first IaaS Web Server host with the domain service account that will be used to perform the installation and will also run the Windows service for the vCAC Management Agent.
Example first Web Server: vratestlab03.testlab.com
Example Domain Service Account: (testlab\svc_vra_iaas01) ensure member of local admins and remote desktop users

Note: You need to perform these steps on the first Windows Server you will use as the primary IaaS Web Server host, ensuring that the server has full network access to all vRealize Automation and IaaS Web, Manager, DEM, and Proxy Agent servers to perform the Management Agent installation.

Click I Understand the Risks, and click Add Exception to accept the certificate.

Click Confirm Security Exception.

Log in using the user name root and the password you specified when you deployed the vRealize Automation appliance.

Click Login.

On the Welcome to the vRealize Automation Wizard page.

Click Next to continue.

On the End User License Agreement page, click I accept the terms of this agreement.

Click Next to continue.

On the Deployment Type page, select the Enterprise deployment option.

Click Next to continue.

Ensure Install Infrastructure as a Service is selected

On the Installation Prerequisites page:

Select one of the appropriate NTP time synchronization options to use among virtual appliances and IaaS servers. For the Virtual Appliance Time Sync. Mode, choose between the Use Host Time or Use Time Server radio button options.

Click Change Time Settings to save the time synchronization method.

Check that the list of IaaS Server host names matches those in the IaaS Management Agent Deployment Information table.

Note: If one of the Windows servers does not appear in the list of IaaS Host Name and does not show it is connected, do not proceed with the installation until the problem is identified and resolved with the IaaS Management Agent. When all Windows servers with IaaS Management Agents report as connected, proceed with the vRealize Automation Installation Wizard.

Click Next.

On the vRealize Appliances page:

Click the green to add the second vRealize Automation Appliance:

Host: Example: vratestlab02.testlab.com

Admin User: root

Password: Enter your root password

Click Next to continue.

Click OK to proceed after the warning for untrusted host message is displayed.

On the Server Roles page, check off the following server roles applicable to the vRealize Automation high availability deployment:

Primary Web (with Model Manager data) Service:

<vratestlab03.testlab.com>

Other Webs:

<vratestlab04.testlab.com>

Manager Service:

<vratestlab05.testlab.com>

<vratestlab06.testlab.com>

DEM & Proxy Agent:

<vratestlab07.testlab.com>

<vratestlab08.testlab.com>

Click Next to continue.

On the Pre-requisite Checker page, click Run.

The prerequisite checker will check for installation prerequisites and display the validation results on the Pre-requisite Checker page.

Wait for the prerequisite checker Status to reflect the validation status by changing from pending to Ok.

After the prerequisites checker validation has completed, verify that the status is reported as OK for all IaaS hosts.

For any IaaS hosts that report prerequisites are not met, click Show Details to expand the view and show the Action required to fix the prerequisites

Click the Hide Details link to collapse the Show Details view.

Click Fix to allow the prerequisites checker to perform any required fixes.

A Loading message will be displayed while the background processes start to fix the reported prerequisite issues.

On the Prerequisites Checker page, wait for the prerequisites checker to complete the fix for each IaaS Host in the IaaS Host Name list.

After the prerequisites checker has completed all fixes to IaaS hosts, the Status column should report OK with all green check marks.

Click Next to continue.

On the next vRealize Automation Host page, enter the vRealize Address that is the DNS Alias or FQDN of the vRealize Automation Load Balancer.

DO NOT CLICK NEXT AT THIS POINT!

You must first create the DNS Alias (CNAME) in DNS (before proceeding) if the initial deployment is not already configured with a load balancer, but you plan to configure the load balancer after the installation is completed.

If, at this point in the deployment a load balancer is introduced, verify that the load balancer VIPs and monitors are configured correctly.

Ensure you have setup your load balancer as per the vRA Load Balancing guide and test resolution of your DNS records.

Navigate to vRA Settings > Cluster and verify the configuration. Expand the Host / Node Name to validate the roles assigned to each node.

Verify all nodes are in a healthy state by checking their Last Connected time from the VAMI of the primary vRA appliance

Ensure the IaaS nodes have a last connected time of less than 30 seconds

Ensure the vRA appliances have a last connected time of less than 10 minutes

Note: The screenshot is from my vRA 7.3 environment

Navigate to vRA Settings > Database and verify the configuration.

Ensure the replication mode is Asynchronous

Check the Connection Status is CONNECTED

Verify the primary vRA appliance is the MASTER node and the secondary vRA appliance is the REPLICA node.

Ensure both Postgres DB nodes have a status of Up

Navigate to Services and confirm all services have a status of REGISTERED.

This concludes part 5 of this vRealize Automation Enterprise installation series and vRealize Automation is now installed. I will continue with the vRA 7 series, where we can now start configuring the post vRA 7 deployment elements.